Artificial intelligence is such a hot topic in software development that companies are even seeking freelancers to help out, making it the No 1. sought-after tech skill in Upwork's latest quarterly report.

New report says data scientists are a happy bunch overall, but they do worry about ethical issues such as human bias and prejudice being programmed into machine learning and the use of artificial intelligence and automation in warfare and intelligence operations.

Whether it's machine learning, artificial intelligence, cognitive computing or whatever, new-age software development is opening up huge new opportunities, with IBM and Microsoft vying for the lead in this new technological space.

Move over, Siri and Tay, and make room for a new female virtual agent set to invade the enterprise: Amelia, a joint effort by Accenture and IPsoft aiming to help organizations adopt complicated and potentially game-changing artificial intelligence technology.

Taking advantage of advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and cognitive computing, Microsoft and Facebook are leading the way in helping developers create a new generation of computing bots, with an early focus on chatbots.

Yet another effort to democratize notoriously difficult Big Data analytics was announced yesterday by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which is providing a machine learning (ML) service to bring that advanced technology to mainstream developers.